A Follow Up Question for Lolis Eric Elie

During Rising Tide 5 last August, I had the opportunity to ask the Treme panel a question about their hopes for Season 2. Here’s my take on writer (now Story Editor) Lolis Eric Elie’s response at that time:

Lolis responded thoughtfully (as is his wont) that it’s hard to explain to “folks from the rest of the country why we haven’t been able to simply snap out of this and even people who were moderately patient will figure, well they had a whole year, so by the Fall of 2006, you should have been okay. My hope is that, we can among other things, help to give some sense of why even by the Fall of 2006 everything wasn’t okay.”

Now that we’ve started Season 2, I wondered if Lolis felt that this desire has been accomplished. Here’s what he had to say:

“I can’t really be the one to say we are ‘there.’ I can tell you where we are trying to get to, but the audiences have to be the judges. In this season, you’re seeing different sides of all of our characters. That will become more apparent in coming weeks as Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce) and Sonny (Michiel Huisman) move into different worlds of their own.

“We’re trying to make human connections. That’s an ambition above and beyond the specifics of explaining post-Katrina recovery. Knowing what’s to come in the season, I am confident that patient viewers will be rewarded and fans of good music will be doubly rewarded.

“There are aspects of this season–the return of crime, government and insurance company bureaucracy, mother-daughter tensions–that will ring true for lots of folks. I also think that this season is a bit easier to understand and appreciate in the earlier episodes. We don’t have so much exposition to get out of the way. So people who may have been slow to embrace the show last season may enjoy the earlier episodes in ways that they came to enjoy the later episodes of last season.”

What’s interesting to me is that in the run up to the premiere, I had focused on some statements that the new season will address the return of crime, and will show more about the systems (like education) that indicated why “even by the Fall of 2006 everything wasn’t okay.” Lolis’ statement reminds me that interpersonal relationships are another reason why. Already in the first episode, we see Toni and Sophia’s struggle. I know I’ll be keeping that in mind for later viewing. I suspect, however, that interpersonal relationships are also a reason for what might go right in Treme. Two sides of a coin.